Always nice to see a lowered truss when you arrive, tech guys at Southampton Uni were extra helpful.
Thank you for sorting this for us, it all worked fantastically on the night!
How to rig a balloon drop
Whenever I’m installing a balloon drop I try to work thinking of a TRIANGLE. The triangle is made up of 3 points on the ceiling/truss. At least 2 hanging points are needed for the net and the 3rd point is for the pull line. The pull line point needs to be a smooth loop so everything runs without too much friction.
Why do we need a loop for the pull line? The balloons will release perfectly without it but what happens after they fall. The slack from the line can fall onto the crowd as there’s nowhere for it to go. With this extra loop in the ceiling – the pull line is always going up and away from the crowd.
A truss is a nice easy way to make a triangle – the net goes across the trussing and the pull line comes out to the side.
In the below example from the ICC I made 2 triangles for the 2 nets, I’ve shown the near side triangle with the 3 red crosses.
Green = Pull Line